A Chinese company called Solar System just announced this new VR headset

Yet another Chinese company has thrown its hat into the virtual reality ring. Techies have been gushing about America’s Oculus Rift for years (though it’s still not commercially available), and Chinese products like ANTVR have already emerged as potential competitors, but now there’s another entry on that list: the Wasai.

From a Chinese company called Solar System Media, the Wasai VR headset promises to take viewers deep into virtual worlds. It’s built on Oculus’s Rift technology (much of which is open source), but Solar System plans to offer users more than just a headset. Wasai will be a suite of products that likely includes games, virtual locations, and additional hardware peripherals (although at the moment it’s mostly using foreign-created VR content from Rift developers).

The Wasai isn’t actually available yet, but if the hardware specs in the promotional image above are any indication, the device isn’t quite on the level of the latest Oculus Rift, as it features a slightly slower screen refresh rate (85 Hz) and a slightly narrower field of view.

And in addition to the inevitable comparisons to the Rift, the Wasai will also face plenty of domestic competition; Solar System CEO Liu Xuanfu told Sina Tech that there are about ten other Chinese companies working on similar VR projects. It’s not clear how Solar System’s product will stack up. In fact, it’s not even really clear what Solar System is: I wasn’t able to find any official website or even wiki entry for the company, although it does seem to be connected to this similarly-named Beijing high-tech video company via its CEO. (Source)